The legality of using surveillance technology to fight the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic
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Surveillance Technology against COVID19

  •   A Legal Approach
  • 10/25/2021
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    The Supreme Court of the State of Israel ruled on the 1st of March 2021 (HCJ no. 6732/20), by a majority of votes (6 out of 7), that the Government can no longer give unlimited authorization to the Israel Security Agency (ISA) to collect cellular phone location data in order to assist in conducting contact tracing of COVID-19 infections.

    The decision is a result of a petition by four civil society organizations, requesting the Court to cancel the law that gives such authorization to the ISA.

    The original law already provided for a series of safeguards, including the following:

    • The law would be in force as a temporary emergency measure, for the period of six months.

    • According to the law, the assistance from the ISA will only be requested in cases where the Government is convinced that there is an immediate and necessary need for the assistance of the ISA.

    • Therefore an inter-ministerial team should be established, in accordance with the law, to examine the necessity of each location tracking, and report to the Governments on its finding. It was further established that

    • Once a decision by the Government to give the aforementioned authorities to the ISA, such authority will exist for a period of only 21 days, or less than that, subjected to an approval by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Israeli parliament (The Knesset)

    In its judgment, the Court established that this procedure, as originally envisaged by the law, is an extraordinary measure that detrimentally affects the constitutional right to privacy. However, given the exceptional situation of the pandemic, as well as the safeguards provided by the law aiming to limit the scope and time of the limitation of the right to privacy, there was no room for the judicial branch to overturn the legislation.

     Nevertheless, it did further determine that, in order to limit to a minimum the consequences to the right to privacy, such measures by the ISA should be restricted. It also afforded the government a timeframe of two weeks to establish through regulations specific limiting rules. Until that, the Court determined that the use of the ISA would be limited only to those individuals who are positive for COVID- 19 and do not cooperate with the contact tracing led by the Ministry of Health.